


It's Not a Love Boat (Except When It Is)

by thebravelittlemonkey



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-16 04:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13628235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebravelittlemonkey/pseuds/thebravelittlemonkey
Summary: As part of their final test to secure a spot on the Starblaster, each crew member must measure the strength of their bonds. Quite literally.---One chapter for each of the seven crew members + an epilogue. Since this is a character study, expect a wild mix of humor, fluff, angst, and drama.





	It's Not a Love Boat (Except When It Is)

**Author's Note:**

> “...the three of you were candidates from a pool of hundreds for this mission, but, you were selected because of the unique skills that you possess that made you sort of a perfect fit for this mission.” Griffin, Episode 60: The Stolen Century Part One
> 
> This is an exploration of how these chucklefucks somehow got picked.

 

In the beginning, there had been hundreds.

Slimming down the IPRE application pool took some time; evaluators reviewed an exhaustive mix of tests, interviews, physicals, recommendations, and a terrible wrench that the Chief Evaluator called ‘gut feeling.’ It was this last ambiguous assessment method that had let a pair of elven twins with extensive criminal records get past round one and beat the odds to round five. However, even after they pushed their hopeful explorers through flight simulations, endurance circuits, ethics exams, and more, they still had two dozen remaining.

They had only approved a single crew member: Barry Bluejeans.

This choice had become not only obvious, but necessary. Barry had been there since the beginning. He was one of the innovators who had created the bond engine blueprints and was the most devoted researcher since. The man was so immersed in his experiments with the engine that he had nearly forgotten to throw his hat in the ring for the mission itself. His lab assistants would argue he only applied so his observations and analysis would not be interrupted by something as bothersome as take-off.

It was Barry who came up with the test that would whittle twenty-four down to seven. In true scientist fashion, he had only wanted to test a hypothesis, not his fellow applicants. The problem Barry was trying to solve was nothing more than a hypothetical. But it was a very, very important hypothetical.

“So as we know, the bond engine runs on bonds,” he began, addressing the assembled candidates with his usual poise and confidence. That is to say, none at all.

“A-and these bonds can take almost...infinite forms. I mean, it’s amazing really. Magnetism and gravitational pull all the way down to ionic and covalent–” He stopped short as he saw no less than three people yawn. The twins were nudging one another, snickering surreptitiously while a tiefling inspected her nails.

“–but you know all of that. Right. Um, so, what we _don’t_ know is what we will find beyond our planar system. New worlds, new species, new...everything.” Barry felt a swell of excitement in his chest just talking about the possibilities. “And–well you know all of that too, of course, but from a technical perspectives this presents some...problems.”

“What do you mean problems?” a concerned half-orc questioned.

“And what’s this have to do with us?” another added.

“Is it aliens? Cause I’ll punch an alien.”

“Are they canceling the mission?”

“No no, it’s not– you definitely don’t need to punch any extra-planar species, please,” Barry insisted, trying to get ahead of the teeming buzz of questions. The applicants were on edge, and justifiably so. The stress of getting cut from the team this late in the game was eating at all of them, and the slightest whiff of a complication sent them into a frenzy.

“We don’t expect there to be any problems, please just let me finish.” A stout dwarf hollered a ‘shut the hell up everybody’ on his behalf and, by some miracle, Barry regained their attention. “The problem isn’t so much a _problem_ . It’s just an unknown variable,” he continued, “We have started to understand how the bond engine works here, on our plane. But we can’t know how it will work on _other_ planes.”

“Soooo, this could be like a one-way ticket sort of thing?” questioned a young fighter, not with concern or excitement, just genuine curiosity.

“That’s...extremely unlikely, Magnus, but it is a possibility, yes. That’s the problem I wanted to find a solution to,” Barry replied.

“I don’t see how that’s a problem. Sounds dope as helllll,” one of the twins commented, “Let’s get this show on the road, boys.”

“And who says _you’re_ going on the suicide mission, Lup?”

“Hey, hey Greg? Hey Greeeeeg? Hey Gre-gor-y?” Lup drew out the syllables as obnoxiously as possible to taunt the rival arcanist. “Hate to break it to you babe, but we already called shotgun.”

“Suck it, Grimmaldis!” her brother whooped.

“Anyways! As I was saying,” Barry interrupted, internally wondering how any of them passed the ethics exam, “I think there is actually a very simple solution. So no, uh, suicide mission. We want all of you–all of us, to come back in one piece. And uh, that’s actually kind of the solution. Us.”

Barry paused for dramatic effect. It didn’t work.

“What I mean is _we_ can power the bond engine, possibly, by ourselves. Which is scientifically fascinating but also extremely practical for our purposes here. We can’t know for certain what the laws of physics or arcana or, well, anything will be on another plane, but we know that _you_ will be there and you all carry invisible bonds with you. Bonds of empathy and companionship and, well, of love.” For a full grown man, Barry was embarrassingly quick to blush, but luckily the gathered crowd was more interested in the implication of the scientist’s words than in his rosy cheeks. The long silence that followed was eventually broken by a skeptical halfling rogue.

“So we’re going to fuel the ship...with the power of love?”

“A love boat!” exclaimed the dwarven cleric.

“That seems a little reductive,” a pilot candidate protested.

“Shut up Daven-dork.”

“Wait like romantic love?”

“Well it _can_ be–” Barry began, immediately regretting his decision.

“So if we get stranded do we have to like…” Magnus attempted to make some sort of euphemistic gesture with his fingers, only to creep himself out. “–like bang or something?”

“Desperate times, desperate measures,” the cleric shrugged in a far too nonchalant fashion.

“Not a chance, Merle.”

“So Taako, when you told Greg to suck it, that could actually–” Lup began with a wicked smirk.

“Yeah absolutely not. Do not even think of finishing that sentence. And for the record, I’m not going to bonetown with any of you fools, I am _way_ too out of your league. Well okay, _maybe_ Darren,” Taako amended, offering a wink to the half-elf pilot. Darren looked confused. Potentially about his sexuality.

“No, _no_! That’s not what I meant at all.” Barry pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses askew as he once again lost control of the conversation. “I really should have just written this all down in a memo or something…”

“I can write memos,” offered a young woman in a small voice, raising her hand as though this were class. She went completely unnoticed amidst the banter.

“Romantic love is just _one_ kind of bond it’s not...it’s definitely _not_ required. Good grief...okay...how do I simplify this,” the scientist griped, trying not to look like a complete disaster in front of the ever-present evaluators who hung around at the back of the room. “Look there are a lot of different kinds of bonds, and they–you know what, maybe I should just show you.”

Barry turned to the glass-paneled room behind him which was strikingly empty. No people, no lab tables, no equipment, and not so much as a scrap of notebook paper. Empty, that is, except for the massive white ring that hung suspended in the center of the room.

“We sealed off this room with a combination of abjuration shields and quantum– with science. Science and magic,” he amended, realizing he was about to lose the tentative hold he had on this unruly crowd. “It’s not perfect, but the bond engine should only respond to the bonds of the person who is in the room. So for instance…”

He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. For a minute, nothing happened. Merle tapped Magnus on the shoulder to see if he was missing something, but the fighter was equally perplexed. Then, slowly, the bond engine began to glow.

It was a single string at first. A thin white thread that wove its way from two opposite ends of the ring until it met in the middle, weaving itself together. Then another, this one thicker and brighter. Then three more, criss-crossing with a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth. As more and more threads sprang to life, they seemed to cling together as they intersected, sticking to one another like a spider’s web. The bright strands swayed gently with a kind of dormant energy and the engine emitted a slight hum.

Everyone, including Barry, was mesmerized by the process. They had all seen the bond engine before, but never had they been privy to such an intimate display. This was not the whirring machinery they had seen in the hanger. This was like freezing the moment before a spark became a flame. For Barry, it was so much more.

This was his heart on a canvas.

Every tiny strand of light was straight from his veins, built on years of memories he could never put into words as beautiful as this. There was an incomprehensible familiarity to each one. They were nameless, faceless bands of light, yet he felt he knew them all. In truth, though, there was only one he could pick out. It was the strongest of the bonds, washing him in a warm glow that lit up the hidden smile on his face. _Love you too, Mom_.

“Yo Bluejeans, what’s with the discotheque?” Oh right, he was giving a demonstration.

“These are...my bonds,” he explained, turning to face the candidates through the glass walls. He was hesitant to continue, savoring one last moment of privacy before continuing.

“Each thread you see is an individual bond.” There weren’t very many, a fact of which he was now keenly aware. “We don’t know how to uh, parse them out individually, but as best we can tell, each one represents some bond we have with another person. Love or otherwise.”

“Woooooah, cool!”

“Um, yea, it’s pretty cool,” Barry agreed, scratching the back of his neck nervously as the group began to scrutinize the display. “Uh...as you can see I spend most of my time in a lab so I don’t, you know, have that many. Not enough to power the Starblaster at least.”

Despite the mild hum emitting from the ring, it remained motionless. A little piece of Barry had hoped that this time it would budge, but finding the results unchanged, he ducked out of the room.

“However, this isn’t always the case.” On cue to Barry’s words, a steel blue Dragonborn stepped out from the back of the room. He wore crisp purple suit, meticulously fitted to his enormous size, complete with a patterned purple tie that he thought was ‘zesty.’ His name tag was prominently displayed beneath his lapel: Todd Toddson, Human Resources.

“Good afternoon everyone!” he greeted with an unreasonable level of cheer. “It is just so good to see everyone today. Now I know I’m just here for the demonstration, but I wanted to take this moment to tell you all how impressed I am. You have done so much hard work to be here, and so I want you all to take a moment here to give yourselves a pat on the back.”

The stoic wall of silence that greeted Todd Toddson spoke volumes. He ignored it entirely.

“I get it, you all don’t want to rest on your laurels. I admire that, too. Just remember what we talked about gang. A happy heart is a healthy heart, and a healthy heart keeps you at your fighting best.” The Dragonborn gave Barry a playful punch to the shoulder and nearly toppled him over completely.

“Um, right. Thanks Todd,” Barry managed, fixing his glasses. “So Todd here, well Todd works with people so uh…”

“So I’m in the business of bonding,” Todd supplied, adding a pair of finger guns because that’s just how Todd rolled.

“Yes...that. So Todd if you could,” he prompted, gesturing to the door.

“Happy to help, Mr. Bluejeans!”

This time, they didn’t have to wait long for the bond engine to come to life. And when it did, it lit up like a Candlenights tree. Bonds overlapped in a thick weave of brilliant light, chasing one another to connect and intertwine. There were more than they could count, and it was difficult to pick out the individual strands, a task which had been remarkably easy with Barry.

The group didn’t have long to examine the intricacies of Todd’s bonds, because soon, everything began to move. Seamlessly, the innermost ring of the bond engine slid into motion, spinning on an invisible axis. Then another, and another, until six concentric circles spun inside of the large outer ring. As they moved, the bonds took on a three dimensional form, forming a glowing globe at the center of the engine.

“Isn’t friendship just beautiful, guys?” Todd said, wiping away a single tear with a sniff. For once, no one tried to contradict the Dragonborn’s cliche. Most were far too dumbstruck by the sheer power that could be created by something that had, until this moment, always been intangible. A few couldn’t help but actually agree with Todd. Even the quiet journaler had stopped the incessant movement of her pen. She was not frozen by awe or sentiment however, but by fear. She had realized what they were about to do.

“Yes, uh, Lucinda?” Barry asked, seeing a hesitant hand in the crowd.

“It’s Lucretia,” she corrected politely. “So is this why we’re here? To test our bonds?”

“That’s one way to put it,” he agreed. And with that, the rest of the room caught up and caught on.

“Wait, this is another test?”

“It’s not even a test, it’s a damn popularity contest!”

“How is that fair?”

“Sucks to suck losers, guess who’s going to space!” Taako announced with a high-five to his sister who was looking equally confident.

“Well no, no hold up guys, that’s not what this is,” Barry interjected, barely stifling the anxious complaints. “Bonds are not about your popularity, per se. It’s deeper than that. Think uh, respect, not reputation. Friends, not fans.”

Taako and Lup abruptly stopped celebrating.

“It’s about what’s in those happy hearts of yours,” Todd added, emerging from the glass room with his usual beaming smile. “The generosity of friendship, the love of family, the passion of romance! The bond engine reaches into the deepest parts of you, and speaks your truth, even if you don’t know it yourself.”

Todd offered a thumbs up, but all eyes were drawn to the engine that loomed behind him: elegant, silent, and waiting.

An evaluator’s pen clicked to the ready.

“So who’s up first?”

**Author's Note:**

> In case you were wondering, none of them passed the ethics exam. They just did equally terrible.
> 
> And yes, Todd Toddson is a shameless nod to Brad Bradson, the most beautiful HR boy.
> 
> Hope you don't mind the excessive exposition here, the following chapters will be much shorter (hopefully). Can you guess who's up next? And who will get the bond engine to start...


End file.
